BOOK XXXI.

Commencement of the war between Antiochus and the Romans; Flamininus is
commissioned to act against Nabis, I.----Hannibal flees from Carthage, and takes
refuge with Antiochus, II.----Nabis is conquered; conduct of the Achaean
league; Hannibal's advice to Antiochus, III.----Antiochus incites the
Carthaginians to go to war with the Romans; the Romans make Antiochus suspicious
of Hannibal, IV.----Hannibal's further counsel to Antiochus, V.----Antiochus
defeated, VI.----He rejects the conditions of peace offered him by the Romans,
VII.----Is defeated again, and accepts them, VIII.

I. PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR, king of Egypt, being dead, and the youthful age of his
son (who, left with the prospect of wielding the sceptre, was a prey even to his
own domestics), beingheld in contempt, Antiochus, king of Syria,
resolved to get possession of Egypt. As he attacked Phoenice, accordingly, and
several cities, which, though situate in Syria, belonged of right to Egypt,1 the
senate despatched ambassadors to him, towarn him "not to molest the
dominions of an orphan, whohad been recommended to their protection
by the last prayers of his dying father." This embassy being disregarded,
another arrived some time after, which, saying nothing on behalf of the orphan,
ordered that "the cities, which had fallen to the Roman people by the right
of war, should be restored to their former condition." On his refusal to
comply with this mandate, war was declared against him, which he, after lightly
undertaking it, prosecuted with ill success.

At the same time, the tyrant Nabis had taken possession of several cities 2
of Greece. The senate, in consequence, that the Roman forces might not be
distracted by two wars atonce, sent orders to Flamininus, that
"he should, if he thought it expedient, deliver Greece from Nabis, as he
had delivered Macedonia from Philip." 3 To this end, his term of command
was prolonged. The name of Hannibal, indeed, rendered a war with Antiochus an
object of dread; for Hannibal's enemies, by secret communications to the Romans,
accused hint |223of having entered into a league with Antiochus, saying that "he, who was
accustomed to command, and to extravagant military licentiousness, was unable to
live patiently under the control of laws; and that, from disgust at the quiet of
the city, he was always looking about for occasions for war." These
charges, though false, passed for true with such as were timid.

II. At length the senate, struck with alarm, sent Cnaeus Servilius, in the
character of ambassador, into Africa, to watch, the proceedings of Hannibal,
giving him secret instructions ''to compass his death, if he could, by the
agency of his enemies, and deliver the Roman people from the terror of his hated
name." But this circumstance did not long escape the knowledge of Hannibal,
a man sagacious in foreseeing and guarding against dangers, and not less
thoughtful of adversity, in prosperity than of prosperity in adversity. Having
shown himself in public, therefore, during the whole day in the forum of
Carthage, before the face of the chief personages and the Roman ambassador, he
mounted his horse, on the approach of evening, and galloped off to a farm which
he had in the suburbs, near the sea-coast, his attendants, who knew nothing of
his intentions, being directed to wait for his return at the gate of the city.
He had vessels, with rowers, concealed in an unfrequented inlet on the coast;
and he had also a large sum of ready money at his farm, so that, when occasion
should require, neither difficulty 4 nor want of resources might retard his
escape. Selecting the most vigorous of his slaves, therefore, the number of whom
a body of Italian prisoners augmented, he went on board a ship, and directed his
course towards the dominions of Antiochus. The next day the city looked for
their chief, who was then consul, 5 in the forum; and when intelligence was
brought that he was, gone, they were all in as much trepidation as if the city
had been taken, and foreboded that his flight would prove fatal to them; while
the Roman ambassador, as if war was already |224
commenced on Italy by Hannibal, returned privately to Rome, carrying the
alarming news with him.

III. In Greece, meanwhile, Flamininus, having formed an alliance with several
cities, defeated Nabis the tyrant in two successive battles, and left him sadly
humbled, with his resources apparently exhausted, in his own dominions. But
after liberty was restored to Greece, the garrisons withdrawn from the cities,
and the Romans returned to Italy, Nabis, as if tempted afresh by the deserted
state of the country, possessed himself of several cities by sudden attacks;
when the Achaeans, alarmed at his proceedings, and fearing that the evils in
their neighbourhood might reach themselves, determined upon war against him, and
appointed to the command in it their strategus Philopoemen, a man of
extraordinary energy, and whose merit was so eminent in the contest, that he was
thought equal, in public opinion, to the Roman general Flamininus.

Hannibal, arriving about the same time at the court of Antiochus, was
received by him as a gift from the gods; and such ardour, in consequence of his
coming, was added to the courage of the king, that he thought less of the mode
of conducting the war, than of the prizes of victory. But Hannibal, to whom the
spirit of Rome was well known, said that the Romans could not be subdued any
where but in Italy. To accomplish their overthrow, he asked for himself a
hundred ships, ten thousand foot, and a thousand cavalry, promising that
"with this force he would revive in Italy no less a war than he had
formerly carried on there, and would secure to the king, remaining quiet in
Asia, either a triumph over the Romans, or equitable conditions of peace. To the
Spaniards,"he added, "who were burning with ardour for
war, nothing was wanting but a leader; that Italy was better known to him now
than in past times; and that Carthage would not rest in peace, but join him as
an ally without delay."

IV. As this counsel pleased the king, one of the attendants of Hannibal was
despatched to Carthage, to encourage the Carthaginians, already forward enough
of themselves, to take up arms, acquainting them that "Hannibal would
support them with an army," and saying that "nothing was wanting, on
the side of the Carthaginians, but resolution, as Asia would supply both troops
and money for the enterprise." When |225
this announcement arrived at Carthage, the messenger was seized by Hannibal's
enemies, and being asked, when he was brought before the senate, "to whom
he was sent," he replied, with Punic subtlety, that "he was sent to
the whole senate, as this was not the concern of a few individuals only, but of
the entire people." As they spent several days in deliberating, whether
they should send him to Rome to clear them from guilt as a nation, he, in
the meanwhile, went secretly on board his vessel, and returned to Hannibal. As
soon as this was discovered, the Carthaginians sent intelligence of the matter
to Rome by an ambassador. The Romans also sent ambassadors to Antiochus, who,
under colour of delivering a message, were to watch the preparations of the
king, and either to soften Hannibal's feelings towards the Romans, or, by
frequent association with him, to render him suspected and unpopular with
Antiochus. The ambassadors, accordingly, meeting with Antiochus at Ephesus, made
their communication from the senate, and, while they waited for an answer, were
every day constantly visiting Hannibal, and observing that, "he had
withdrawn from his country under needless apprehension, as the Romans would with
the greatest honour observe a peace which was made not so much with his
government as with himself; and that they knew he had made war upon the Romans,
less from hatred to them, than from love to his country (to which every
honourable man owed life itself), since the reasons for going to war were public
ones between the nations, and not private ones between the generals." They
then extolled his exploits; and he, pleased with their conversation, talked
frequently and readily with them, not being aware that by his familiarity with
the Romans, he was incurring the dislike of the king; for Antiochus, supposing
that by such frequent intercourse a good understanding had been effected between
him and the Romans, communicated nothing to him as he had been used to do, and
began to detest him, when he had excluded him from his councils, as an enemy and
a traitor to him. This distrust ruined the mighty preparations for war, the
skill of a leader being wanting to conduct it. The communication from the senate
was, that . "Antiochus should confine himself within the limits of Asia,
lest he should lay on them the necessity of invading that |226
country." Slighting this message, he resolved not to wait for war, but
to commence it.

V. It is said, that after the king had frequently held councils concerning
the war, from which Hannibal was excluded, he at length desired that he should
be called in, not that he might act in any respect according to his advice, but
that he might not appear entirely to disregard him; and that, when all the rest
had been asked their opinions, he in conclusion inquired his. Hannibal,
understanding what Antiochus's feelings were, observed that "he was aware
he was asked to attend, not because the king wished for his advice, but to make
up the full number of votes; yet, from his hatred towards the Romans, and regard
for the king, with whom alone a secure retreat was left him in his exile, he
would explain the method in which the war should be conducted." Then,
requesting indulgence for the freedom with which he was going to speak, he said,
that "he approved none of the present suggestions or proceedings; nor did
he like Greece as a seat of the war, when Italy was a far more advantageous
field for it; for the Romans could not be conquered but by their own arms, nor
Italy subdued but by the resources of Italy; since that people differed from
others, and their mode of warfare from that of other nations. In other wars, it
was of the greatest importance to have been the first to take advantage of any
ground or opportunity, to have ravaged the lands, or to have captured towns, but
that, with the Romans, whether you took their cities, or defeated them, you
would still have to struggle with the enemy even when vanquished and fallen. If
any one should attack them in Italy, therefore, he might conquer them with their
own strength,6 their own resources, their own arms, as he himself had done; but
if any one left Italy to them, which was the fountain-head, as it were, of their
power, he would act just as absurdly, as a man who should attempt, not to
exhaust rivers at their sources, but to alter their channels or dry them up when
great floods of water had collected in them. He had entertained this," he
said, "as his private opinion, and had readily offered his advice to that
effect; and that he repeated it now, in the presence of |227
his friends, that they might all understand the way to go to war with the
Romans, who, though invincible abroad, might be reduced at home; for they might
be deprived of their city sooner than of their empire, and of Italy sooner than
of their provinces; since they had lost their city to the Gauls, and been almost
crushed by him; nor was he ever defeated till he had quitted their country, but
that, when he returned to Carthage, the fortune of the war was immediately
changed with the seat of it."

VI. The king's courtiers were all opposed to this advice, not regarding the
advantages of the plan, but fearing that Hannibal, if his counsel were approved,
would gain the first place in the king's favour. As for Antiochus, he did not so
much dislike the scheme as the proposer of it, in the apprehension that whatever
glory resulted from its success would be given to Hannibal, and not to himself.
All proceedings were therefore rendered ineffectual by the various flatteries of
those who sought to please the king; nothing was conducted with judgment or
reason. Antiochus himself, resigning himself to luxury during the winter, was
every day engaged in celebrating some new marriage.7 Acilius the Roman consul,
on the other hand, who had been appointed to command in this war, provided
forces, arms, and every thing necessary for the contest, with the utmost
activity: he animated the confederate cities, and drew to his interest such as
were undecided. Nor was the result of the conflict at variance with the
preparations of each party for it; for, in the first engagement, when the king
saw his men giving ground, he did not support those who were in distress, but
put himself at the head of those that fled, and left his rich camp a prey to the
conquerors. But having reached Asia in his flight, while the Romans were busied
about the spoil, he began to repent of having neglected Hannibal's counsel, and,
taking that general again into his friendship, conducted every thing according
to his directions. In the mean time intelligence was brought that Aemilius,8 the
Roman general, was approaching with |228
eighty ships of war, having been despatched by the senate to carry on the war
by sea. This news gave him hopes of retrieving his fortune; and accordingly he
resolved to fight a battle by sea before any of the cities in alliance with him
could revolt to the enemy, hoping that the defeat which he had suffered in
Greece might be compensated by a new victory. The fleet was therefore entrusted
to Hannibal, and a battle was fought; but neither were the Asiatic soldiers a
match for the Romans, nor their vessels equal to the beaked ships of the enemy.
The loss, however, was rendered less than if would otherwise have been, by the
able management of the general. The report of the victory had not yet reached
Rome,9 and therefore the city was in suspense about the consuls to be chosen.

VII. But to oppose Hannibal, what fitter leader could be appointed than the
brother of Africanus, since it was the business of the Scipios to conquer the
Carthaginians? Lucius Scipio was therefore made consul, and his brother
Africanus appointed to be his lieutenant-general, to let Antiochus see that he
had not more confidence in the conquered Hannibal than the Romans in the
victorious Scipio. As the Scipios were transporting their army into Asia, news
reached them that the war, both by land and sea, was almost at an end; as Antiochus had been defeated in a battle by land, and Hannibal in a battle by sea.
As soon as they arrived, Antiochus sent ambassadors to them, desiring peace, and
having with them, as an offering to Africanus individually, the son of that
general, whom the king had captured as he was crossing in a small boat. But
Africanus replied, "that private favours were distinct from public
concerns; that the obligations of a father, and the claims of one's country,
were things entirely different; claims which were to be preferred not only to
children, but even to life itself. That he, however, thankfully accepted the
kindness, and would make a return to the king's generosity at |229
his own individual expense; but as to what related to war and peace, nothing
could be allowed to private favour, or cut off from the interests of his
country." He had never, indeed, either treated about the ransom of his son,
or allowed the senate to treat about it, but, as became his dignity, said that
"he would recover his son by force of arms." The terms of peace were
then specified to the ambassadors: "that the king should give up Asia to
the Romans; that he should confine himself to his kingdom of Syria; that he
should give up all his ships, with the prisoners and deserters, and repay the
Romans all the expenses of the war." These terms being repeated to
Antiochus, he said that "he was not yet so utterly reduced, as that he
should suffer himself to be despoiled of his dominions; and that such proposals
were provocations to war, not invitations to peace."

VIII. Preparations for a contest were in consequence made on both sides; and
when the Romans, having entered Asia, had reached Troy, mutual gratulations took
place between the Trojans and the Romans; the Trojans observing that
"Aeneas, and the other leaders that accompanied him, had gone forth from
them;" the Romans telling them that "they were their children;"
and such joy was among them all as is wont to be between parents and children
met after a long separation. The Trojans were delighted that their descendants,
after having conquered the west and Africa, were now laying claim to Asia as
their hereditary domain, remarking that "the ruin of Troy had been an event
to be desired, since it was so happily to revive again." On the other hand,
an insatiable longing to gaze on their ancient home, the birth-place of their
ancestors, and the temples and images of the gods, had taken possession of the
Romans.

As the Romans were coming from Troy, king Eumenes met them with some
auxiliary troops; and soon after a battle was fought with Antiochus; in which
one of the Roman legions, on the right wing, being beaten back, and fleeing to
their camp with more disgrace than danger, Marcus Aemilius, a military tribune,
who had been left to defend the camp, ordered his men to arm themselves, and
advance without the rampart, and to threaten the fugitives with their swords
drawn, saying that "they should be put to death unless they returned to the
field, and should find their own camp more hostile to |230
them than that of the enemy." The legion, alarmed at such peril on both
sides, returned to the battle, their fellow soldiers, who had stopped their
flight, accompanying them, and, making great havoc among the enemy, were the
first cause of the victory. Fifty thousand of the enemy were slain, and eleven
thousand taken prisoners. Antiochus suing for peace, nothing was added to the
former articles, Africanus observing that "the spirit of the Romans was
never broken if they were defeated, and, if they were victorious, they were not
rendered tyrannical by success." The cities that were taken they divided
among their allies, deeming that glory was more desirable for the Romans 10
than
dominions merely for pleasure; and that the honour of victory was worthy of
being attached to the Roman name, but that the luxuries of wealth might be left
to their adherents.

BOOK XXXII.

The Aetolians are deprived of their liberty by the Romans; war between the
Messenians and Achaeans; death of Philopoemen; defeat of the Messenians,
I.----Death of Antiochus; Philip oppresses Greece; the Romans pardon him for the
sake of his son Demetrius; Demetrius killed through the artifices of his brother
Perseus, II.----Death of Philip; Emigration of the Gauls; the Tectosages,
Istrians, Dacians, III.----Prusias, assisted by Hannibal, defeats Eumenes; death
of Hannibal, IV.

I. THE Aetolians, who had persuaded Antiochus to make war on the Romans, were
left, after he was defeated, to oppose them by themselves, unequal in force, and
unsupported by assistance. Being soon after, in consequence, subdued, they lost
that liberty which they alone, among so many states of Greece, had preserved
inviolate against the power of the Athenians and Spartans. This state of things
was the more grievous to them, as it was later in befalling them; for they
reflected on those times in which they had withstood the mighty power of the
Persians by their own strength, and had |231
humbled, in the Delphic war, the violent spirit of the Gauls that was dreaded
by Asia and Italy; and these glorious recollections increased their grief at the
loss of their liberty.

During the course of these occurrences, a dispute at first, and afterwards a
war, arose between the Messenians and Achaeans, to determine which of the two
should rule the other. In this struggle Philopoemen, the famous general of the
Achaeans, was taken prisoner, not from having been fearful of exposing his life
in the field, but from having fallen from his horse in leaping a ditch, as he
was rallying his men for the contest, and being overpowered by a host of
enemies. The Messenians, whether from fear of his valour, or respect for his
dignity, did not venture to kill him as he lay on the ground; but, as if they
had ended the war by capturing him, they led him prisoner through their whole
city as in triumph, while the people poured forth to meet him, as if it were
their own general, and not that of the enemy, that was coming; nor would the
Achaeans have more eagerly beheld him victorious than the enemy saw him under
defeat. They ordered him accordingly to be led into the theatre, that every one
might see him whose capture seemed incredible to every one. Being then conducted
to prison, they gave him, from respect for his high character,11 poison to drink,
which he received with pleasure, just as if he had been conqueror, first asking
"whether Lycortas," a general of the Achaeans, whom he knew to be next
to himself in the art of war, "had got off safe?" Hearing that he had
escaped, he observed that "things were not utterly desperate with the
Achaeans," and expired. The war being renewed shortly after, the Messenians
were conquered, and made some atonement for putting Philopoemen to death.

II. In Syria, meanwhile, king Antiochus, being burdened, after he was
conquered by the Romans, with a heavy tribute under his articles of peace, and
being impelled by want of money or stimulated by avarice, brought up his army
one night, and made an assault upon the temple of Jupiter in Elymais,12 hoping
that he might more excusably commit |232
sacrilege under plea of wanting money to pay his tribute. But the affair becoming
known, he was killed by a rising of the people who dwelt about the temple.13

At Rome, as many cities of Greece had sent thither, to complain of injuries
received from Philip king of Macedonia, and as a dispute arose in the
senate-house between Demetrius, Philip's son, whom his father had sent to
justify him to the senate, and the deputies of the cities, the young prince,
confounded at the number of accusations brought forward, suddenly became
speechless; when the senate, moved at his modesty, which had been admired by
every one when he was a hostage at Rome, suffered the controversy to terminate
in his favour. Thus Demetrius, by his modesty, obtained pardon for his father,
which was granted, not to the justice of his defence, but from respect for his
bashfulness; and this was particularly signified in the decree of the senate,
that it might be known that it was not so much the king that was acquitted, as
the father that was excused for the sake of the son. The circumstance, however,
procured Demetrius no thanks for his embassy at home, but rather odium and
detraction; for envy drew upon him hatred from his brother Perseus, and with his
father, the cause of the indulgence shown him, as soon as he knew it, become a
source of dislike towards him, as he was indignant that the character of his son
should have had more weight with the senate than his own authority as a father
or his dignity as a king. Perseus, in consequence, observing his father's
chagrin, laid before him, day after day, accusations against Demetrius in his
absence, and rendered him first an object of hatred, and afterwards of
suspicion, charging him at one time with friendship for the Romans, and at
another with treachery to his father. At last he pretended that a plot was laid
for his own life by Demetrius, and, to prove the charge, brought forward
informers, suborned witnesses, and committed the very crime 14
of which he
accused his brother. Impelling |233 his father, by these artifices, to put his son to death, he filled the whole
palace with mourning.

III. After Demetrius was killed, and his rival removed. Perseus grew not only
more careless in his behaviour towards his father, but even more insolent,
conducting himself, not as heir to the crown, but as king. Philip, offended at
his manner, became every day more concerned for the death of Demetrius, and
began at length to suspect that he had been deceived by treachery, and put to
the torture all the witnesses and informers. Having, by this means, come to the
knowledge of the deception, he was not less afflicted at the dishonesty of
Perseus than at the execution of the innocent Demetrius, whom he would have
avenged, had he not been prevented by death; for shortly after he died of a
disease contracted by mental anxiety, leaving great preparations for a war with
the Romans, of which Perseus afterwards made use. He had induced the Scordiscan
Gauls to join him, and would have had a desperate struggle with the Romans, had
not death carried him off.

The Gauls, after their disastrous attack upon Delphi, in which they had felt
the power of the divinity more than that of the enemy, and had lost their leader
Brennus, had fled, like exiles, partly into Asia, and partly into Thrace, and
then returned, by the same way by which they had come, into their own country.
Of these, a certain number settled at the conflux of the Danube and Save, and
took the name of Scordisci. The Tectosagi, on returning to their old settlements
about Toulouse, were seized with a pestilential distemper, and did not recover
from it, until, being warned by the admonitions of their soothsayers, they threw
the gold and silver, which they had got in war and sacrilege, into the lake of
Toulouse; all which treasure, a hundred and ten thousand pounds of silver, and
fifteen hundred thousand pounds of gold, Caepio, the Roman consul, a long time
after, carried away with him. But this sacrilegious act subsequently proved a
cause of rain to Caepio and his army. The rising of the Cimbrian war, too,
seemed to pursue the Romans as if to avenge the removal of that devoted
treasure. Of these Tectosagi, no small number, attracted by the charms of
plunder, repaired |234to Illyricum, and, after spoiling the Istrians, settled in Pannonia.

The Istrians, it is reported, derive their origin from those Colchians who
were sent by king Aeetes in pursuit of the Argonauts, that had carried off his
daughter,15 who, after they had sailed from the Pontus Euxinus into the Ister,
and had proceeded far up the channel of the river Save, pursuing the track of
the Argonauts, conveyed their vessels upon their shoulders over the tops of the
mountains, as far as the shores of the Adriatic sea, knowing that the Argonauts
must have done the same before them, because of the size of their ship.16 These
Colchians, not overtaking the Argonauts, who had sailed off, remained, whether
from fear of their king or from weariness of so long a voyage, near Aquileia,
and were called Istrians from the name of the river up which they sailed out of
the sea.

The Dacians are descendants of the Getae. This people having fought
unsuccessfully, under their king Oroles, against the Bastarnae, were compelled
by his order, as a punishment for their cowardice, to put their heads, when they
were going to sleep, in the place of their feet,17 and to perform those offices
for their wives which used previously to be done for themselves. Nor were these
regulations altered, until they had effaced, by new exertions in the field, the
disgrace which they had incurred in the previous war.

IV. Perseus, having succeeded to the throne of his father Philip, applied to
all these nations to join him in a war against the Romans. In the meanwhile a
war broke out between king Prusias, to whom Hannibal had fled when peace was
granted |235 Antiochus by the Romans, and Eumenes; a war which Prusias was the first to
begin, having broken his treaty with Eumenes through confidence in Hannibal.

Hannibal, when the Romans, among other articles of peace, demanded from
Antiochus that he should be surrendered to them, received notice of this demand
from the king, and, taking to flight, went off to Crete. Here, when he had long
led a quiet life, but found himself envied for his great wealth, he deposited
some urns, filled with lead, in the temple of Diana, as if thus to secure his
treasure. The city,18 in consequence, being no longer concerned about him, as
they supposed that they had his wealth in pledge, he betook himself to Prusias,
putting his gold into some statues which he carried with him, lest his riches,
if seen, should endanger his life. Prusias being subsequently defeated in a
battle by land, and transferring the war to the sea, Hannibal, by a new
stratagem, was the cause of procuring him a victory; for he ordered serpents of
every kind to be enclosed in earthen pots, and to be thrown, in the hottest of
the engagement, into the enemy's ships. This seemed at first ridiculous to the
Pontic soldiers,19 that the enemy should fight with earthen pots, as if they
could not fight with the sword.20 But when the ships began to be filled with
serpents, and they were thus involved in double peril, they yielded the victory
to the enemy.

When the news of these transactions was brought to Rome, ambassadors were
despatched by the senate to require the two kings to make peace, and demand the
surrender of Hannibal. But Hannibal, learning their object, took poison, and
frustrated their embassy by his death.

This year was rendered remarkable by the deaths of the three greatest
generals then in the world, Hannibal, Philopoemen, and Scipio Africanus. Of
these three it is certain that Hannibal, even at the time when Italy trembled at
him, thundering in the war with Rome, and when, after his return to Carthage, he
held the chief command there, never reclined |236
at his meals, or indulged himself with more than one pint 21
of wine at a time;
and that he preserved such continence among so many female captives, that one
would be disposed to deny that he was born in Africa. Such, too, was his
prudence in command, that though he had to rule armies of different nations, he
was never annoyed by any conspiracy among his troops, or betrayed by their want
of faith, though his enemies had often attempted to expose him to both.

BOOK XXXIII.

War of the Romans with Perseus, I.----Perseus defeated and made prisoner;
treatment of Macedonia and Aetolia by the Romans, II.

I. THE Romans carried on the Macedonian war with less disturbance to their
country than the Punic war, but with more renown, as the Macedonians surpassed
the Carthaginians in honour, and were animated, moreover, by their glory in
having conquered the east, and supported also by the auxiliary forces of all the
neighbouring princes.22 The Romans, accordingly, both raised a greater number of
legions, and called for assistance from Masinissa, king of Numidia, and all the
rest of their allies; while notice was also given to Eumenes, king of Bithynia,
to aid them in the war with his whole force. Perseus, besides his Macedonian
army, which had had the reputation of being invincible, had supplies for a ten
years' war. collected by his father, in his treasures and magazines. Elevated by
these resources, and forgetful of his father's fortune, he bade his soldiers
think of the past glory of Alexander.

The first engagement was one of cavalry only; and Perseus, being victorious
in it, attracted the favourable regard of all who had previously been in
suspense. Yet he sent ambassadors to the consul to ask for peace, which the
Romans had granted to his father even when conquered, offering to defray the
expenses of the war, as if he had been defeated. But the |237
consul Sulpicius offered him terms not less harsh than he would have offered
to a vanquished enemy. In the meantime, the Romans, under the dread of so
formidable a war, created Aemilius Paulus consul, and conferred upon him, out of
due course,23 the command in the Macedonian war.

Aemilius, when he had reached the camp, lost no time in coming to a battle.
The night before it was fought, the moon was eclipsed; a phenomenon which all
interpreted unfavourably for Perseus, and presaged that the downfall of the
Macedonian empire was portended.

II. In this engagement, Marcus Cato, the son of Cato the orator, while he was
fighting, with extraordinary bravery, among the thickest of the enemy, fell from
his horse, and continued his efforts on foot. A number of the enemy gathered
about him when he fell, with loud shouts, as if they would kill him as he lay on
the ground, but he, recovering himself sooner than they expected, made great
slaughter among them. The enemy flocking round him, however, to overpower him
with their numbers, his sword, as he was aiming at a tall fellow among them,
fell from his hand among a troop of his opponents; when he, to recover it,
plunged in among the points of the enemy's weapons, protecting himself with his
shield, while both armies were looking on, and, having regained his sword,
though not without receiving many wounds, he got back safe to his friends,
amidst a loud shout from the enemy. 24 The rest of the Romans, imitating his
boldness, secured the victory. King Perseus fled, and arrived, with ten thousand
talents, at Samothrace; and Cnaeus Octavius, being sent by the consul in pursuit
of him, took him prisoner, with his two sons Alexander and Philip, and brought
him to the consul.

Macedonia, from the time of Caranus, who was the first that reigned in it, to
Perseus, had thirty kings; under whose government it continued for nine hundred
and twenty-three years, but possessed supreme power for only a hundred and
ninety-two.25 When it fell under the power of the Romans, it
|238 was left free, magistrates being appointed in every city; and it received
laws from Paulus Aemilius, which it still uses.

As to the Aetolians, the senators of every city in the country, whose
fidelity had been suspected, were sent, together with their wives and children,
to Rome; where, to prevent them from raising any disturbance in their country,
they were long detained; and it was not without difficulty, and after the senate
had been wearied with embassies from the cities for their release, that they
were allowed to return to their own country.

BOOK XXXIV.

The Romans make war on the Achaeans, I.----Defeat of the Achaeans; Corinth
demolished; affairs in Egypt; Ptolemy Philometor requests aid from Rome,
II.----Embassy from the Romans to Antiochus Epiphanes; his death; he is
succeeded by his brother Demetrius Soter, III.----Prusias, king of Bithynia,
killed by his son Nicomedes, IV.

I. THE Carthaginians and Macedonians being subdued, and the power of the
Aetolians weakened by the captivity of their leading men, the Achaeans were the
only people of all Greece who seemed to the Romans, at that time, to be too
powerful; not, indeed, from any extraordinary strength existing in any
individual city, but because of a confederacy maintained among all the cities.
For the Achaeans, though distributed through several towns, like so many
different members, yet formed but one body and had but one government, and
warded off danger from any single city by the united strength of all. To the
Romans, therefore, as they were seeking a pretext for war, fortune opportunely
presented the complaints of the Spartans, whose lands the Achaeans, in
consequence of hatred subsisting |239 between the two people, had laid waste. Answer was accordingly made by the
senate to the Spartans, that "they would send commissioners into Greece, to
examine into the affairs of their allies, and to prevent further injury;"
but secret directions were at the same time given the commissioners, that
"they should dissolve the confederacy among the Achaeans, and make each
city independent of the rest, that they might thus the more easily be reduced to
obedience, while, if any cities were obstinate, they might be humbled by
force." The commissioners, in consequence, having summoned the chief men of
the cities to meet them at Corinth, read to them the decree of the senate, and
signified what their intentions were; declaring it "expedient for all, that
each city should have its own independent laws and government." When this
communication was known throughout the city, the people being thrown as it were
into a fury, massacred all the foreigners that were there, and would have laid
violent hands on the Roman commissioners themselves, had they not fled away in
haste as soon as they found a disturbance rising.

II. When the news of these occurrences reached Rome, the senate at once
decreed war against the Achaeans, giving the conduct of it to the consul
Mummius, who, conveying over his army with the utmost expedition, and actively
providing himself with all necessaries, proceeded to offer the enemy battle. As
for the Achaeans, as if they had undertaken a matter of no difficulty in going
to war with the Romans, every thing was neglected and out of order amongst them.
Thinking of plunder, too, and not of fighting, they brought vehicles to carry
away the spoils of the enemy, and stationed their wives and children on the
hills to view the engagement. But when the battle commenced, they were cut to
pieces before the eyes of their kindred, and afforded them only a dismal
spectacle and sad remembrances of grief. Their wives and children, also, were
changed from spectators into prisoners, and became the prey of the enemy. The
city of Corinth itself was razed to the ground, and the inhabitants sold for
slaves, that, by such an example, a dread of insurrection might be thrown on
other cities.

During these transactions, Antiochus, king of Syria, made war upon Ptolemy 26
king of Egypt, his elder sister's son, a |240
prince naturally inactive, and so weakened by daily luxurious indulgence,
that he not only neglected the duties of his royal station, but even, through
excessive gluttony, had lost all human feeling. Being expelled from his throne,
he fled to Alexandria to his younger brother Ptolemy,27 and, having shared the
kingdom with him, they jointly sent ambassadors to the Roman senate, imploring
assistance, and the protection of their alliance; and their solicitations
prevailed with the senate.

III. Accordingly Popilius was despatched, in the character of ambassador, to
Antiochus, to desire him "to refrain from invading Egypt, or, if he had
already entered it, to quit it without delay." Having found him in Egypt,
and the king having offered to kiss him (for Antiochus, when he was a hostage 28
at Rome, had been friendly with Popilius among others), Popilius said that
"private friendship must be set aside, when the commands of his country
stood in the way," and having produced and delivered to him the decree of
the senate, but observing that he hesitated, and referred the consideration of
it to his friends, he drew a circle round him with a staff which he carried in
his hand, so large that it also enclosed his friends, and desired him "to
decide on the spot, and not to go out of that ring, till he had given an answer
to the senate whether he would have peace or war with Rome." This firmness
so daunted the king's spirit, that he replied that "he would obey the
senate."

Antiochus, on returning to his kingdom, died, leaving a son quite a boy.
Guardians being assigned him by the people, his uncle 29
Demetrius, who was a
hostage at Rome, and who had heard of the death of his brother, went to the
senate, and said that "he had come to Rome as a hostage while his brother
was alive, but that now he was dead, he did not know |241
for whom he was a hostage. It was therefore reasonable," he added,
"that he should be released to claim the throne, which, as he had conceded
it to his elder brother by the law of nations, now of right belonged to himself,
as he was superior to the orphan in age." But finding that he was not
released by the senate (their private opinion being that the throne would be
better in the hands of the young prince than in his), he left the city on
pretence of going to hunt, and secretly took ship at Ostia,30 with such as
attended him in his flight. On arriving in Syria, he was favourably received by
the whole people, and the orphan being put to death, the throne was resigned to
him by the guardians.

IV. About the same time, Prusias, king of Bithynia, conceived a resolution to
kill his son Nicomedes, with a desire to benefit his younger children by a
second marriage, whom he had sent to Rome. But the design was betrayed to the
young prince by those who had undertaken the execution of it, and who exhorted
him, since he had become an object of his father's cruelty, "to anticipate his
schemes, and turn the villainy on the head of its contriver." Nor was it
difficult to prevail upon him; and when, being sent for, he had come 31
into his
father's dominions, he was immediately selected as king. Prusias, deprived of
his throne by his son, and reduced to a private station, was forsaken even by
his slaves. While he lived in retirement, he was killed by his son, with no less
guilt than that with which he himself had ordered his son to be put to death.

BOOK XXXV.

Demetrius Soter, king of Syria, dethroned and killed by Alexander Bala,
I.----His death avenged by his son Demetrius Nicator, II.

I. DEMETRIUS, having possessed himself of the throne of Syria, and thinking
that peace might be dangerous in the unsettled state of his affairs, resolved to
enlarge the borders |242 of his kingdom, and increase his power, by making war upon his neighbours.
Accordingly, being incensed with Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, for having
disdained to marry his sister, he kindly received his brother Orophernes, who
had been unjustly deprived of the throne, and who came to him as a suppliant;
and, rejoicing that a plausible pretext for war was afforded him, determined to
reinstate him in his dominions. But Orophernes, with extreme ingratitude, having
entered into a compact with the people of Antioch, at that time enraged against
Antiochus, formed a plot to expel him from his throne by whom he was to have
been restored to his own. The conspiracy being discovered, Demetrius spared
indeed the life of Orophernes, that Ariarathes might not be freed from the dread
of war on the part of his brother, but caused him to be apprehended, and kept a
close prisoner at Seleucia. Nor were the people of Antioch so alarmed at this
discovery as to desist from their rebellion. Being in consequence attacked by
Demetrius, but receiving aid from Ptolemy king of Egypt, Attalus king of Asia,32
and Ariarathes of Cappadocia, they suborned one Bala, a young man of mean
condition, to claim the throne of Syria, on pretence that it had been his
father's, by force of arms; and that nothing might be wanting to render him
insolent, the name of Alexander was given him, and he was reported to be the son
of King Antiochus. And such was the detestation of Demetrius among all classes,
that not only royal power, but also nobility of birth, was unanimously
attributed to his rival. Alexander, in consequence, amidst this wonderful change
of fortune, forgetful of his original meanness, and supported by the strength of
almost all the east, made war upon Demetrius, and, having defeated him, deprived
him at once of his throne and his life. Demetrius, however, did not want courage
to resist him in the field; for he both routed the enemy in the first encounter,
and, when the kings renewed the contest, he killed several thousands in the
struggle. But at last he fell, with his spirit still unsubdued, and fighting
most valiantly, among the thickest of the enemy.

II. At the commencement of the war, Demetrius had entrusted two of his sons
to a friend of his at Cnidus, with a |243
large quantity of treasure, that they might be removed from the perils of the
war, and might be preserved, if fortune should so order it, to avenge their
father's death. The elder of the two, Demetrius, who had passed the age of
boyhood, hearing of the luxurious life of Alexander (whom his unexpected
grandeur, and the fascination of enjoyments to which he was a stranger, held
captive as it were in his palace, idling away his days among troops of
concubines), fell upon him, with the assistance of some Cretans, when he was
quite at his ease, and free from all apprehension of danger. The people of
Antioch, too, to atone for their injuries to the father by new services, devoted
themselves to him; and his father's soldiers, fired with love for the young
prince, and preferring the obligation of their former oath to the haughty rule
of the new king, ranged themselves on the side of Demetrius; and thus Alexander,
cast down with no less violent a freak of fortune than that with which he had
been raised, was defeated and killed in the first battle, paying the penalty of
his conduct both to Demetrius whom he had slain, and to Antiochus, from whom he
had pretended to derive his birth.

BOOK XXXVI.

Demetrius Nicator made prisoner by the Parthians; rise and fall of Trypho;
Antiochus Sidetes subdues the Jews, I.----Origin of the Jews; their departure
from Egypt, II.----Account of Palestine; conquerors of the Jews,
III.----Character of Attalus of Pergamus; he bequeaths his kingdom to the
Romans, who possess themselves of it in spite of Aristonicus, IV.

I. DEMETRIUS, having gained possession of his father's throne, and being
spoiled by his good fortune, fell, from the effects of the vices of youth, into
habits of indolence, and incurred as much contempt for his slothfulness, as his
father had incurred hatred for his pride. As the cities, in consequence, began
every where to revolt from his government, he resolved. in order to wipe off the
stain of effeminacy from his character, to make war upon the Parthians. The
people of the east beheld his approach with pleasure, both on account of the
cruelty of Arsacides,33 king of the Parthians, and because
|244 having been accustomed to the old government of the Macedonians, they viewed
the pride of the new race with indignation. Being assisted, accordingly, by
auxiliary troops from the Persians, Elymaeans, and Bactrians, he routed the
Persians in several pitched battles. At length, however, being deceived by a
pretended offer of peace, he was made prisoner, and being led from city to city,34 was shown as a spectacle to the people that had revolted, in mockery of
the favour that they had shown him. Being afterwards sent into Hyrcania, he was
treated kindly, and suitably to the dignity of his former condition.

During the course of these proceedings, Trypho, in Syria, who had exerted his
efforts to be made by the people guardian to Antiochus, the step-son of
Demetrius, killed his ward, and seized upon the Syrian throne. When he had
enjoyed it for some time, and the liking of the people for his new government
began at length to wear off, he was defeated in a battle by Antiochus, the
brother of Demetrius, who was then quite a boy, and who had been educated in
Asia; and the throne of Syria again returned to the family of Demetrius.

Antiochus, remembering that his father had been hated for his pride, and his
brother despised for his indolence, was anxious not to fall into the same vices,
and having married Cleopatra, his brother's wife, proceeded to make war, with
the utmost vigour, on the provinces that had revolted through the badness 35
of
his brother's government, and, after subduing them, re-united them to his
dominions. He also reduced the Jews, who, during the Macedonian rule under his
father Demetrius, had recovered their liberty by force of arms; and whose
strength was such, that they would submit to no Macedonian king after him, but,
electing rulers from their own people, harassed Syria with fierce wars.

II. The origin of the Jews 36 was from Damascus, a most
|245 famous city of Syria, whence also the Assyrian kings and queen Semiramis
37 sprung. The name of the city was given it from King Damascus, in honour of whom
the Syrians consecrated the sepulchre of his wife Arathis as a temple, and
regard her as a goddess worthy of the most sacred worship After Damascus,
Azelus, and then Adores, Abraham, and Israhel were their kings. But a prosperous
family of ten sons made Israhel more famous than any of his ancestors. Having
divided, his kingdom, in consequence, into ten governments, he committed them to
his sons, and called the whole people Jews from Judas, who died soon after the
division, and ordered his memory to be held in veneration by them all, as his
portion was shared among them. The youngest of the brothers was Joseph, whom the
others, fearing his extraordinary abilities, secretly made prisoner, and sold to
some foreign merchants. Being carried by them into Egypt, and having there, by
his great powers of mind, made himself master of the arts of magic, he found in
a short time great favour with the king; for he was eminently skilled in
prodigies, and was the first to establish the science of interpreting dreams;
and nothing, indeed, of divine or human law seems to have been unknown to him;
so that he foretold a dearth in the land some years before it happened, and all
Egypt would have perished by famine, had not the king, by his advice, ordered
the corn to be laid up for several years; such being the proofs of his
knowledge, that his admonitions seemed to proceed, not from a mortal, but a god.
His son was Moses, whom, besides the inheritance of his father's knowledge, the
comeliness of his person also recommended. But the Egyptians, being troubled
with scabies and leprosy, and moved by some oracular prediction, expelled him,
with those who had the disease, out of Egypt, that the distemper might not
spread among a greater number. Becoming leader, accordingly, of the exiles, he
carried off by stealth the sacred utensils of the Egyptians, who, endeavouring
to recover them by force of arms, were obliged by tempests to return home; and
Moses, having reached Damascus, the birth-place of his forefathers, took
possession of mount Sinai, on his arrival at which, after having |246
suffered, together with his followers, from a seven days' fast in the deserts
of Arabia, he consecrated every seventh day (according to the present custom of
the nation) for a fast-day, and to be perpetually called a sabbath, because that
day had ended at once their hunger and their wanderings. And as they remembered
that they had been driven from Egypt for fear of spreading infection, they took
care, in order that they might not become odious, from the same cause, to the
inhabitants of the country, to have no communication with strangers; a rule
which, from having been adopted on that particular occasion, gradually became a
custom and part of their religion. After the death of Moses, his son Aruas38 was
made priest for celebrating the rites which they brought from Egypt, and soon
after created king; and ever afterwards it was a custom among the Jews to have
the same chiefs both for kings and priests; and, by uniting religion with the
administration of justice, it is almost incredible how powerful they became.

III. The wealth of the nation was augmented by the duties on balm,39 which is
produced only in that country; for there is a valley, encircled with an unbroken
ridge of hills, as it were a wall, in the form of a camp, the space enclosed
being about two hundred acres, and called by the name of Hierichus; 40
in which
valley there is a wood, remarkable both for its fertility and pleasantness, and
chequered with groves of palm and balm-trees. The balm-trees resemble
pitch-trees in shape, except that they are not so tall, and are dressed after
the manner of vines; and at a certain season of the year they exude the balm.
But the place is not less admired for the |247
gentle warmth of the sun in it, than for its fertility; for though the sun in
that climate is the hottest in the world, there is constantly in this valley a
certain natural subdued tepidity in the air.41

In this country also is the lake Asphaltites, which, from its magnitude and
the stillness of its waters is called the Dead Sea; for it is neither agitated
by the winds, because the bituminous matter, with which all its water is
clogged, resists even hurricanes; nor does it admit of navigation, for all
inanimate substances sink to the bottom; and it will support no wood, except
such as is smeared with alum. The first 42 that conquered the Jews was Xerxes,
king of Persia. Subsequently they fell, with the Persians themselves, under the
power of Alexander the Great; and they were then long subject to the kings of
Syria, under its Macedonian dynasty. On revolting from Demetrius, and soliciting
the favour of the Romans,43 they were the first of all the eastern people that
regained their liberty, the Romans readily affecting to bestow what it was not
in their power to give.

IV. During the same period, in which the government of Syria was passing from
hand to hand among its new sovereigns, King Attalus in Asia polluted a most
flourishing kingdom, which he inherited from his uncle Eumenes, by murders of
his friends and executions of his relatives, pretending sometimes that his old
mother, and sometimes his wife Berenice, had been destroyed by their wicked
contrivances. After this |248 atrocious outburst of rage, he assumed a mean dress, let his beard and hair
grow like those of persons under legal prosecution, never went abroad or showed
himself to the people, held no feasts in his palace, and behaved in no respect,
indeed, like a man in his senses; so that he seemed to be paying penalty for his
crimes to the manes of those whom he had murdered. Abandoning the government of
his kingdom, too, he employed himself in digging and sowing in his garden,
mixing noxious herbs with harmless ones, and sending them all indiscriminately,
moistened with poisonous juices, as special presents to his friends. From this
employment he turned to that of working in brass, and amused himself with
modelling in wax, and casting and hammering out brazen figures. He then
proceeded to make a monument for his mother, but while he was busy about the
work, he contracted a disorder from the heat of the sun, and died on the seventh
day afterwards. By his will the Roman people was appointed his heir.44

There was however a son of Eumenes, named Aristonicus, not born in wedlock,
but of an Ephesian mistress, the daughter of a player on the harp; and this
young man, after the death of Attalus, laid claim to the throne of Asia as
having been his father's. When he had fought several successful battles against
the provinces, which, from fear of the Romans, refused to submit to him, and
seemed to be established as king. Asia was assigned by the senate to the command
of Licinius Crassus, who, being more eager to plunder the treasures of Attalus
than to distinguish himself in the field, and fighting a battle, at the end of
the year, with his army in disorder, was defeated, and paid the penalty for his
blind avarice by the loss of his life. The consul Perperna being sent in his
place, reduced Aristonicus, who was defeated in the first engagement, under his
power, and carried off the treasures of Attalus, bequeathed to the Roman people,
on ship-board to Rome. Marcus Aquilius, Perperna's successor, envying his good
fortune, hastened, with the utmost expedition, to snatch Aristonicus from
Perperna's hands, as if he ought rather to grace his own triumph. But the death
of Perperna put an end to the rivalry between the consuls. |249
Asia, thus becoming a province of the Romans, brought to Rome its vices
together with its wealth.

BOOK XXXVII.

The people of Marseilles entreat the Romans in behalf of Phocaea; affairs in
Asia, Cappadocia, and Pontus, I.----Of Mithridates, II.----His conquests,
III.----His invasion of Paphlagonia; his rupture with the Romans, IV.

I. AFTER Aristonicus was taken prisoner, the people of Marseilles sent
ambassadors to Rome to intercede for the Phocaeans their friends, whose city and
even name the senate had ordered to be destroyed, because, both at that time,
and previously in the war against Antiochus, they had taken up arms against the
Roman people. The embassy obtained from the senate a pardon for them. Rewards
were then bestowed on the princes who had given aid against Aristonicus; to
Mithridates 45 of Pontus was allotted Greater Phrygia; to the sons of Ariarathes,
king of Cappadocia, who had fallen in that war, were assigned Lycaonia and
Cilicia; and the Roman people were more faithful to the sons of their ally, than
their mother was to her children, since by the one the kingdom of the young
princes was increased, by the other they were deprived of life. For Laodice, out
of six children, all boys, whom she had by king Ariarathes (fearing that, when
some of them were grown up, she would not long enjoy the administration of the
kingdom), killed five by poison; but the care of their relatives, rescued from
the barbarous hands of their mother one infant, who, after the death of Laodice
(for the people killed her for her cruelty), became sole king.

Mithridates also, being cut off by sudden death, left a son, who was likewise
named Mithridates, and whose greatness was afterwards such that he surpassed all
kings,46 not only of his own but of preceding ages, in glory, and carried on war
against the Romans, with various success, for forty-six years, during which,
though the most eminent generals, Sulla, Lucullus, and others, and at last,
Cnaeus Pompey, overcame him, yet it was |250
only so that he rose greater and more glorious to renew the contest, and was
rendered even more formidable by his defeats And he died at last, not from being
overpowered by his enemies,47 but by a voluntary death, full of years and on the
throne of his ancestors, and leaving his son his heir.

II. The future greatness of this prince even signs from heaven had foretold;
for in the year in which he was born, as well as in that in which he began to
reign, a comet blazed forth with such splendour, for seventy successive days on
each occasion, that the whole sky seemed to be on fire. It covered a fourth part
of the firmament 48
with its train, and obscured the light of the sun with its
effulgence; and in rising and setting it took up the space of four hours.49
During his boyhood his life was attempted by plots on the part of his guardians,
who, mounting him on a restive horse, forced him to ride and hurl the javelin;
but when these attempts failed, as his management of the horse was superior to
his years, they tried to cut him off by poison. He, however, being on his guard
against such treachery, frequently took antidotes, and so fortified himself,50
by exquisite preventives, against their malice, that when he was an old man, and
wished to die by poison, he was unable. But dreading lest his enemies should
effect that by the sword which they could not accomplish by drugs, he pretended
a fancy for hunting, in the indulgence of which he never went under a roof, for
seven years, either in the city or the country, but rambled through the forests,
and passed his nights in various places among the mountains, none knowing where
he was. He accustomed himself to escape from the wild beasts, or pursue them, by
speed of foot, and by this means, while he avoided |251
the plots laid for him, he inured himself to endure all manner of bodily
exertion.

III. When he assumed the government of the kingdom, he turned his thoughts,
not so much to the regulation of his dominions, as to the enlargement of them.
He in consequence subdued, with extraordinary success, the Scythians, who had
previously been invincible, who had cut off Zopyrion, the general of Alexander
the Great, with an army of thirty thousand men, who had massacred Cyrus, king of
the Persians, with two hundred thousand, and who had routed Philip, king of
Macedonia. Having thus increased his forces, he made himself master of Pontus,51
and afterwards of Cappadocia. Fixing his thoughts on the conquest of Asia,52 he
went privately, with some of his friends, out of his kingdom, and travelled
through the whole of it without the knowledge of any one, making himself
acquainted with the situations of the towns and the nature of the country. He
next went into Bithynia, and, as if he were already master of Asia, took note of
whatever might aid him in attempting the conquest of it. He then returned into
his country, when they had begun to suppose that he was dead, and found an
infant son born to him, of whom his wife Laodice, who was also his sister, had
been delivered in his absence. But amidst the congratulations that he received
on his arrival, and on the birth of his, son, he was in danger of being
poisoned; for his sister and wife Laodice, believing him dead, had yielded
herself to the embraces of his friends, and, as if she could conceal the crime,
of which she had been guilty, by a greater, prepared poison for him on his
return. Mithridates, however, having notice of her intention from a female
servant, avenged the plot upon the heads of its contrivers.

IV. When winter came on, he did not spend his time in feasts, but in the
field, not in idleness, but in exercise, not among companions in licentiousness,
but contending among his equals in age, either in riding, running, or trials of
strength. He inured his army also, by daily exercise, to endure fatigue equally
with himself; and thus, while he was himself |252
unconquerable, he rendered his army unconquerable likewise. Entering then into an
alliance with Nicomedes, he invaded Paphlagonia, and divided it, after it was
conquered, among his allies. But when information reached the senate that it was
in possession of the two kings, they sent ambassadors to both, desiring that
"the country should be restored to its former condition." Mithridates,
thinking himself now a match for the power of the Romans, haughtily replied,
that "the kingdom had belonged to his father by inheritance, and that he
wondered that a dispute, which had never been raised against his father, should
be raised against himself;" and, not at all alarmed by threats, he seized
also on Galatia. As for Nicomedes, he replied that "as he could not
maintain that he had any right to the country, he would restore it to its
legitimate sovereign;" and, altering his son's name to Pylaemenes, the
common name of the Paphlagonian kings, he assigned it to him; and thus, as if he
had restored the throne to the royal line, he continued to occupy the country on
this frivolous pretext. The ambassadors, when they found themselves thus set at
nought, returned to Rome.

BOOK XXXVIII.

Mithridates takes possession of Cappadocia, I.----Disputes between him and
Nicomedes; the senate take from them Cappadocia and Paphlagonia,
II.----Mithridates forms an alliance with Tigranes; invades Asia, and defeats
the Romans and Nicomedes, III.----Speech of Mithridates to his army, IV. V. VI.
VII.----Cruelties and excesses of Ptolemy Physcon; he is expelled from Egypt by
his subjects, VIII.----Demetrius Nicator, king of Syria, made prisoner by the
Parthians, IX.----Antiochus Sidetes, brother of Demetrius, falls in war against
the Parthians; Demetrius regains his throne, X.

II. MITHRIDATES having commenced his cruelties by killing his wife, resolved
also on removing the sons of his other sister Laodice, (whose husband
Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, he had treacherously cut off by the agency of a
certain Gordius,53) thinking that nothing was gained by the death of the father,
if the young princes should possess themselves of his throne, with a desire of
which he himself was strongly inflamed. As |253
he was meditating on this scheme, Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, proceeded to
occupy Cappadocia, while it. was left defenceless by the death of its sovereign;
and Mithridates, on receiving intelligence of his movements, sent assistance to
his sister, on pretence of affection for her, to enable her to drive Nicomedes
out of Cappadocia. But Laodice had already made a compact to marry Nicomedes;
and Mithridates, being indignant at this arrangement, expelled the garrisons of
Nicomedes from Cappadocia, and restored the throne to his sister's son; an act
of the highest merit, had no treachery followed it. But some months after, he
pretended that he wished to restore Gordius, whom he had used as his agent in
the assassination of Ariarathes, to his country; hoping that, if the young man
opposed his recal, he should have a pretext for war, or, that if he consented to
it, the son might be taken off by the same instrument by which he had procured
the death of the father. When the young Ariarthes understood his intention, he
expressed great indignation that the murderer of his father should be recalled
from banishment, especially by his uncle, and assembled a great army.
Mithridates, after bringing into the field eighty thousand foot, ten thousand
horse, and six hundred chariots armed with scythes, (while Ariarathes, by the
aid of the neighbouring princes, had no less a force), fearing the uncertain
event of a battle, turned his thoughts to treachery, and, inviting the young
prince to a conference, and having, at the same time, a weapon concealed in his
lower garments, he said to the searcher, who was sent by Ariarathes, after the
manner of princes on such occasions, to examine his person, and who was feeling
very carefully about his groin, that "he had better take care, lest he
should find another sort of weapon than he was seeking." Having thus
covered his treachery with a joke, he killed his nephew, (after drawing him
aside from his friends as if to confer with him secretly), in the sight of both
armies, and bestowed the kingdom of Cappadocia on his own son, a child eight
years old, giving him the name of Ariarathes, and appointing Gordius his
guardian.

II. The Cappadocians, however, being harassed by the cruelty and
licentiousness of their rulers, revolted from Mithridates, and sent for the
brother of their king, who was also called Ariarathes, from Asia where he was
being educated. |254 Upon this prince Mithridates again made war, defeated him, and drove him from
Cappadocia; and not long after the young man died of a disease brought on by
anxiety. After his death, Nicomedes, fearing lest Mithridates, from having added
Cappadocia to his dominions, should also seize upon Bithynia which was near it,
instructed a youth, of extraordinary beauty, to apply for the throne of Bithynia
from the senate, as having been his father's, pretending that Ariarathes had not
had two sons only, but a third. He sent his wife Laodice, also, to Rome, to
testify that her husband had three children born to him. Mithridates, when he
heard of this contrivance, despatched Gordius, with equal effrontery, to Rome,
to assure the senate that "the young prince, to whom he had assigned the
throne of Cappadocia, was the son of that Ariarathes who had fallen in the war
against Aristonicus when giving assistance to the Romans." But the senate,
perceiving the ambitious designs of the two kings, who were seizing the
dominions of others on false pretences, took away Cappadocia from Mithridates,
and, to console him, Paphlagonia from Nicomedes; and that it might not prove an
offence to the kings, that any thing should be taken from them and given to
others, both people were offered their liberty. But the Cappadocians declined
the favour, saying that ''their nation could not subsist without a king."
Ariobarzanes was in consequence appointed their king by the senate.

III. The king of Armenia, at this time, was Tigranes, who had long before
been committed as a hostage to the Parthians, but had subsequently been sent
back to take possession of his father's throne. This prince Mithridates was
extremely desirous to engage as an ally in the war, which he had long meditated,
against the Romans. By the agency of Gordius, accordingly, he prevailed upon him
to make war, having not the least thought of offending the Romans by the act, on
Ariobarzanes, a prince of inactive disposition; and, that no deceit might seem
to be intended, gave him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage. On the first
approach of Tigranes, Ariobarzanes packed up his baggage and went off to Rome.
Thus, through the instrumentality of Tigranes, Cappadocia was destined to fall
again under the power of Mithridates. Nicomedes, too, dying at the same time,
his son, who was also named Nicomedes, was driven from his dominions by |255
Mithridates, and, having gone as a suppliant to Rome, it was decreed by the senate
that "both the kings should be restored to their thrones;" and
Aquilius and Manlius Maltinus 54 were commissioned to see the decree executed. On
being informed of this proceeding, Mithridates formed an alliance with Tigranes,
with a resolution at once to go to war with the Romans; and they agreed that the
cities and territory that should be taken from the enemy should be the share of
Mithridates, and that the prisoners, and all booty that could be carried off,
should belong to Tigranes. In the next place, well understanding what a war he
was provoking, he sent ambassadors to the Cimbri, the Gallograecians,55
the
Sarmatians, and the Bastarnians, to request aid; for all the time that he had
been meditating war with the Romans, he had been gaining over all these nations
by acts of kindness and liberality. He sent also for an army from Scythia, and
armed the whole eastern world against the Romans. Accordingly, without much
difficulty, he defeated Aquilius and Maltinus, who had an army wholly composed
of Asiatic troops, and having put them to flight, as well as Nicomedes, he was
received with great joy by the various cities, in which he found a great
quantity of gold and silver, and vast warlike stores, laid up by the care of
former princes. Taking possession of these, he remitted the cities all sorts of
debts, public and private, and granted them an immunity from tribute 56
for five
years.

He then assembled his troops, and animated them, by various exhortations, to
pursue the war with the Romans, or in Asia. His speech, on this occasion, I have
thought of such importance that I insert a copy of it in this brief work. Trogus
Pompeius has given it in the oblique form, as he finds fault with Livy and
Sallust for having exceeded the proper |256
limits of history, by inserting direct 57 speeches in their works only to
display their own eloquence.

IV. "It were to be wished," he said, "that it were still in
his power to deliberate whether he should choose peace or war with the Romans;
but that resistance should be offered against aggressors, not even those doubted
who were without hope of victory; for all men draw the sword against robbers, if
not to save their lives, at least to take revenge. But since it was not now a
question, when they had come to hostilities (not merely in intention but in the
field of battle), they must consider in what manner, and with what hopes, they
could continue the contest which they had commenced. That he felt certain of
victory, if they had but courage; and that the Romans might be conquered, was
known, not more to himself than to his soldiers, who had routed both Aquilius in
Bithynia and Maltinus in Cappadocia. And if examples from other nations would
weigh more with them than their own experience, he had heard that the Romans had
been overthrown in three battles by Pyrrhus, when he had with him not more than
five thousand Macedonians; he had heard that Hannibal continued victorious in
Italy for sixteen years, and that it was not the strength of the Romans, but the
violence of his own countrymen's envy and jealousy, that prevented him from
taking the city of Rome itself; he had heard that the people of Transalpine Gaul
had invaded Italy, and founded many great cities in it, and that the same Gauls
had possessed themselves of a larger territory there than in Asia, though Asia
was considered by no means a warlike country; he had been informed that Rome was
not only taken but conquered by the Gauls, the top of one hill only being left
in possession of the inhabitants, and that the enemy was not made to retire by
the sword, but by gold. But that the power of the Gauls, which had always so
much alarmed the Romans, he himself numbered among his own forces; for that
these Gauls, who inhabited Asia, differed only in situation from the Gauls who
had settled themselves in Italy; that they had the same extraction, courage, and
mode of fighting; and that, as to sagacity, the Asiatic Gauls must have more
than the others, inasmuch as they had pursued a longer and more difficult |257
march through Illyricum and Thrace, having traversed those territories with
almost more labour than it had cost them to acquire those in which they settled.
That he had heard that Italy itself, since the time that Rome was built, had
never been fairly brought under subjection to her, but that constantly, year
after year, some of its people persisted in contending for liberty, and others
for a share in the government;58 and that, by many states of Italy, armies of the
Romans had been out off by the sword, and by others, with a new species of
insult, sent under the yoke? 59 But that, not to dwell on past instances, all
Italy, at the present time, was in arms in the Marsian war, demanding, not
liberty, but a participation in the government and the rights of citizenship.
Nor was the city more grievously harassed by war from its neighbours in Italy,
than by intestine broils among its leading men; and that a civil war, indeed,
was much more dangerous to it than an Italian one. At the same time, too, the
Cimbri from Germany, many thousands of wild and savage people, had rushed upon
Italy like a tempest; and that in wars with such enemies, though the Romans
might be able to resist them singly, yet by them all they must be overpowered;
so that he thought they would even be too much occupied to make head against his
attack.

V. "That they ought therefore to take advantage of the present
circumstances, and seize the opportunity of increasing their power, lest, if
they remained inactive while the Romans were occupied, they should hereafter
find greater difficulty in contending with them, when they were quiet and
unmolested. For it was not a question whether they should take up arms or not,
but whether they should do so at a time favourable to themselves or to their
enemies. That war, indeed, had been commenced against him by the Romans, when
they took from him, in his minority, the Greater Phrygia, a country which they
had granted to his father as a recompence for the succours which he had afforded
them in the war against Aristonicus, and which Seleucus Callinicus had given to
his great-grandfather Mithridates, as a dowry with his daughter. When |258
they required him to quit Paphlagonia, too, was not that a renewal of
hostility, a possession which had fallen to his father, not by conquest or force
of arms, but by adoption in a will,60 and as an inheritance on the death of its
own sovereigns? That, under the severity of such decrees, he had not been able
to soften them by compliance, or to prevent them from assuming harsher measures
towards him every day. For in what particular had he not submitted to their
requisition? Had not Phrygia and Paphlagonia been given up?Had not his
son been removed from Cappadocia, which he had gained, as a conqueror, by the
common law of nations? Yet his conquest had been forced from him by those who
had nothing themselves but what they had got in war. Was not Christos,61 king of
Bithynia, on whom the senate had decreed that war should be made, killed by him
for their gratification? Yet that whatever Gordius or Tigranes did, was imputed
to him; that liberty was readily granted by the senate to Cappadocia (liberty of
which they deprived other nations), on purpose to affront him; and that when the
people of Cappadocia, instead of the liberty offered them, begged to have
Gordius for their king, they did not obtain their request merely because Gordius
was his friend. That Nicomedes had made war upon him by their direction; that
when he was going to avenge himself, he was obstructed by them; and that their
pretence for making war on him at present would be, that he had not given, up
his dominions to Nicomedes, the son of a public dancer, to be ravaged with
impunity.

VI. "That it was not the offences of kings, but their power and majesty,
for which they attacked them; and that they had not acted thus against himself
alone, but against all other princes at all times. That they had treated his
grandfather Pharnaces in the same manner, who, by the arbitration of his
relatives, was made successor to Eumenes king of Pergamus; that Eumenes himself,
again, in whose fleet they had for the first time been transported into Asia,
and by whose |259 army, rather than their own, they had subdued both Antiochus the Great and
the Gauls in Asia, and soon after king Perses in Macedonia, had been treated by
them as an enemy, and had been forbidden to come into Italy, though they made
war, which they thought it would be disgraceful to make upon himself, upon his
son Aristonicus.62
No king's services were thought more important by them than
those of Masinissa, king of Numidia; to him it was ascribed that Hannibal was
conquered; to him, that Syphax was made prisoner; to him. that Carthage was
destroyed; he was ranked with the two Africani, as a third saviour of the city;
yet a war had lately been carried on with his grandson in Africa, so implacably,
that they would not save the vanquished prince, for the sake of his
grandfather's memory, from being cast into gaol, and led in triumph as a public
spectacle. That they had made it a law to themselves to hate all kings, because
they themselves had had such kings at whose names they might well blush, being
either shepherds of the Aborigines, or soothsayers of the Sabines, or exiles
from the Corinthians, or servants and slaves of the Tuscans, or, what was the
most honourable name amongst them, the proud; and as their founders,
according to their report, were suckled by the teats of a wolf, so the whole
race had the disposition of wolves, being insatiable of blood and tyranny, and
eager and hungry after riches.63

VII. "But as for himself, if he were compared with them as to
respectability of descent, he was of more honourable origin than that mixed mass
of settlers, counting his ancestors, on his father's side, from Cyrus and
Darius, the founders of the Persian empire, and those on his mother's side from
Alexander the Great and Seleucus Nicator, who established the Macedonian empire;
or, if their people were compared with his own, he was at the head of nations, 64
which were not merely a match for the power of Rome, but had withstood even
that of Macedonia. That none of the people under his command had ever endured a
foreign yoke, or obeyed any rulers but their own native princes; for whether
they looked on Cappadocia or Paphlagonia, Pontus or Bithynia, or the |260
Greater and Lesser Armenia, they would find that neither Alexander, who
subdued all Asia,65 nor any of his successors or posterity, had meddled with any
one of those nations. That as to Scythia, only two kings before him, Darius and
Philip, had ventured, not indeed to reduce it, but merely to enter it, and had
with difficulty secured a retreat from it; yet that from that country he had
procured a great part of his force to oppose the Romans. That he had entered on
the Pontic wars 66 with much more timidity and diffidence, as he was then young
and inexperienced. That the Scythians, in addition to their arms and courage,
were defended by deserts and cold, by which was shown the great labour and
danger of making war there, while, amidst such hardships, there was not even
hope of spoil from a wandering enemy, destitute, not only of money, but of
settled habitations. But that he was now entering upon a different sort of war;
for there was no climate more temperate than that of Asia, nor any country more
fertile or more attractive from the number of its cities; and that they would
spend a great part of their time, not as in military service, but as at a
festival, in a war of which it was hard to say whether it would be more easy or
more gainful, as they themselves might feel assured, if they had but heard of
the late riches of the kingdom of Attalus, or the ancient opulence of Lydia and
Ionia, which they were not going to acquire by conquest, but to take possession
of; while Asia so eagerly expected him,67 that it even invited him in words, so
much had the rapacity, of the proconsuls, the sales of the tax-gatherers, and
the disgraceful mode of conducting law-suits, possessed the people with a hatred
of the Romans. That they had only to follow him bravely, and learn what so great
an army might do under his conduct, whom they had seen seizing Cappadocia, after
killing its king, not with the aid of any troops, but by his own personal
effort, and who alone, of all mankind, had subdued all Pontus and Scythia, which
no one before him could safely penetrate or approach. As to his justice and
generosity, he was willing to take the soldiers themselves, who had |261
experienced them, as witnesses to what they were; and he had those proofs to
bring of the latter, that he alone, of all kings, possessed not only his
father's dominions, but foreign kingdoms, acquired by inheritance through his
liberality, namely, Colchis, Paphlagonia, and the Bosporus."

VIII. Having thus encouraged his troops, he entered upon the war with the
Romans,68
twenty-three years after his accession to the throne.

In Egypt, meanwhile, on the death of Ptolemy, 69
the throne, with the queen
Cleopatra his sister in marriage, was offered by an embassy to the Ptolemy 70
who was reigning at Cyrene. Ptolemy, rejoiced at having recovered his brother's
throne without a struggle (for which he knew that his brother's son was
intended, both by his mother Cleopatra and the inclination of the nobles), but
being incensed at all that had opposed his interests, ordered, as soon as he
entered Alexandria, the partisans of the young prince to be put to death. He
also killed the youth himself on the day of his nuptials (when he took his
mother to wife), amidst the splendour of feasts, the ceremonies of religion, and
in the very embraces of his parent, and thus went to the couch of his sister
stained with the blood of her child. Nor was he afterwards more merciful to
those of his subjects who had invited him to the throne, for license to use the
sword being given to the foreign soldiers, all places daily ran with blood. He
divorced his sister, too, offering violence to her daughter, a young maiden, and
then taking her in marriage. The people, terrified at these proceedings, fled to
other countries, and became exiles from their native soil through fear of death.
Ptolemy, in consequence, being left alone with his soldiers in so large a city,
and finding himself a king, not of men, but of empty houses, invited, by a
proclamation, foreigners to become residents in it. While people were flocking
thither, he went out to meet some Roman commissioners, Scipio Africanus, Spurius
Mummius, and Lucius Metellus, who had come to inspect the dominions of their
allies. But he appeared as ridiculous to the Romans as |262
he was cruel to his own subjects; for he was disagreeable in countenance,
short in stature, and, from his obesity, more like a beast than a man. This
deformity the extraordinary thinness of his apparel, which was even transparent,
made more remarkable, just as if that was affectedly obtruded on the sight which
by a modest man would have been most carefully concealed. After the departure of
the commissioners, (of whom Africanus, as he surveyed the city, was an object of
interest to the Alexandrians), finding that he had become hateful even to the
foreigners whom he had invited, he withdrew secretly, for fear of plots against
his life, into voluntary exile, accompanied by a son that he had by his sister,
and by his wife, her mother's rival, and, having collected an army of
mercenaries, made war at once upon his sister and his country. He next sent for
his eldest son from Cyrene, and put him to death, when the people began to pull
down his statues and images, and he, imagining that this was done to please his
sister, killed the son that he had by her, and contrived to have the body,
divided into portions and arranged in a chest, presented to the mother at a
feast on his birth-day. This deed occasioned grief and sorrow, not only to the
queen, but also to the whole city, and threw such a gloom over a banquet
intended to be most joyous, that the whole palace was suddenly filled with
mourning. The attention of the nobility, in consequence, being turned from
feasting to a funeral, they exhibited the mangled limbs to the people, and let
them see, by the murder of his son, what they were to expect from their king.

IX. Cleopatra, when the mourning for the loss of her son was over, finding
herself pressed by war on the part of her brother, sent ambassadors to request
aid from Demetrius king of Syria, a prince whose changes of fortune had been
numerous and remarkable. After making war, as has been said above,71 upon the
Parthians, and gaining the victory in several battles, he was suddenly surprised
by an ambuscade, and, having lost his army, was taken prisoner. Arsacides,72 king
of the Parthians, having sent him into Hyrcania, not only paid him, with royal
magnanimity, the respect due to a prince, but gave him his daughter also in
marriage, and promised to recover for him the throne of Syria, which Trypho had
usurped in his absence. After the death of this king, Demetrius, despairing of
being |263 allowed to return, being unable to endure captivity, and weary of a private,
though splendid, life, secretly planned a mode of escaping to his own country.
His counsellor and companion in the scheme was his friend Callimander, who,
after Demetrius was taken prisoner, had come in a Parthian dress from Syria,
with some guides that he had hired, through the deserts of Arabia to Babylon.
But Phraates, who had succeeded Arsacides, brought him back, for he was
overtaken in his flight by the speed of a party of horse sent after him by a
shorter road. When he was brought to the king, not only pardon, but a testimony
of esteem for his fidelity, was given to Callimander, but as for Demetrius, he
sent him back, after having severely reproached him, into Hyrcania to his wife,
and directed that he should be kept in stricter confinement than before. Some
time after, when children that were born to him had caused him to be more
trusted,73 he again attempted flight, with the same friend as his attendant, but
was overtaken, with equal ill-fortune, near the borders of his dominions, and
being again brought to the king, was ordered out of his sight, as a person whom
he could not endure to see. But being then also spared, for the sake of his wife
and children, he was remanded into Hyrcania, the country of his punishment, and
presented with golden dice, as a reproach for his childish levity. But it was
not compassion, or respect for ties of blood, that was the cause of this
extraordinary clemency 74 of the Parthians toward Demetrius; the reason was, that
they had some designs on the kingdom of Syria, and intended to make use of
Demetrius against his brother Antiochus, as circumstances, the course of time,
or the fortune of war, might require.

X. Antiochus, having heard of their designs, and thinking it proper to be
first in the field, led forth an army, which he had inured to service by many
wars 75
with his neighbours, against the Parthians. But his preparations for
luxury were not less than those for war, for three hundred thousand 76
camp |264 followers, of whom the greater number were cooks, bakers, and stage-players,
attended on eighty thousand armed men. Of silver and gold, it is certain, there
was such an abundance that the common soldiers fastened their buskins with gold,
and trod upon the metal for the love of which nations contend with the sword.
Their cooking instruments, too, were ot silver, as if they were going to a
banquet, not to a field of battle. Many kings of the east met Antiochus on his
march, offering him themselves and their kingdoms, and expressing the greatest
detestation of Parthian pride. Nor was there any delay in coming to an
engagement. Antiochus, being victorious in three battles, and having got
possession of Babylon, began to be thought a great man. All the neighbouring
people, in consequence, joining him, nothing was left to the Parthians but their
own country. It was then that Phraates sent Demetrius into Syria, with a body of
Parthians, to seize the throne, so that Antiochus might be recalled from Parthia
to secure his own dominions. In the meantime, since he could not overthrow
Antiochus by open force, he made attempts upon him everywhere by stratagem. On
account of the number of his forces, Antiochus had distributed his army, in
winter quarters, through several cities; and this dispersion was the cause of
his ruin; for the cities, finding themselves harassed by having to furnish
supplies, and by the depredations of the soldiers, revolted to the Parthians,
and, on an appointed day, conspired to fall upon the army divided among them, so
that the several divisions might not be able to assist each other. News of the
attack being brought to Antiochus, he hastened with that body of troops which he
had in winter-quarters with him, to succour the others that lay nearest. On his
way he was met by the king of the Parthians, with whom he himself fought more
bravely than his troops; but at last, as the enemy had the superiority in
valour, he was deserted, through fear on the part of his men, and killed.
Phraates had funeral rites performed for him as a king, and married the daughter
of Demetrius, whom Antiochus had brought with him, and of whom he had become
enamoured. He then began to regret having sent away Demetrius, and hastily
despatched some troops of horse to fetch him back; but they found that prince,
who had been in fear of pursuit, already seated on his throne, and, after doing
all they could to no purpose, returned to their king. |265

BOOK XXXIX.

Demetrius dethroned by a pretender named Zabinas; his death; state of his
family, I.----Zabinas killed by Antiochus Grypus; a new pretender, Antiochus of
Cyzicus, II.----Death of Ptolemy Physcon; state of Egypt and Syria; Antiochus of
Cyzicus dethrones his brother Grypus, III.---- Cleopatra drives Ptolemy Lathyrus
from Egypt, and places on the throne Ptolemy Alexander, by whom she is killed,
IV.-----Ptolemy Alexander driven from Egypt; Lathyrus recalled; Ptolemy Apion,
king of Cyrene, bequeaths his dominions to the Romans; desolation of Egypt and
Syria, V.

I. AFTER Antiochus and his army were cut off in Persia, his brother
Demetrius, being delivered from confinement 77
among the Parthians, and restored
to his throne, resolved, while all Syria was mourning for the loss of the army,
to make war upon Egypt, (just as if his and his brother's wars with the
Parthians, in which one was taken prisoner and the other killed, had had a
fortunate termination), Cleopatra his mother-in-law promising him the kingdom of
Egypt, as a recompence for the assistance that he should afford her against her
brother. But, as is often the case, while he was grasping at what belonged to
others, he lost his own by a rebellion in Syria; for the people of Antioch, in
the first place, under the leadership of Trypho, and from detestation of the
pride of their king (which, from his intercourse with the unfeeling Parthians,
had become intolerable), and afterwards the Apamenians 78
and other people,
following their example, revolted from Demetrius in his absence Ptolemy, king of
Egypt, too, who was threatened with a war by him, having learned that his sister
Cleopatra had put much of the wealth of Egypt on ship-board, and fled into Syria
to her daughter and son-in-law Demetrius, sent an Egyptian youth, 79
the son of
a merchant named Protarchus, to claim the throne of Syria by force of arms,
having forged a story, that he had been admitted into the family of King
Antiochus by |266 adoption, and the Syrians, at the same time, refusing no man for their king,
if they might but be freed from the insolence of Demetrius. The name of
Alexander was given to the youth, and great succours were sent him from Egypt.
Meanwhile the body of Antiochus, who had been killed by the king of the
Parthians, arrived in Syria, being sent back in a silver coffin for burial, and
was received with great respect by the different cities, as well as by the new
king, Alexander, in order to secure credit to the fiction. This show of
affection procured him extraordinary regard from the people, every one supposing
his tears not counterfeit but real. Demetrius, being defeated by Alexander, and
overwhelmed by misfortunes surrounding him on every side, was at last forsaken
even by his wife and children. Being left, accordingly, with only a few slaves,
and setting sail for Tyre, to shelter himself in the sanctuary of a temple
there, he was killed, as he was leaving the ship, by order of the governor of
the city. One of his sons, Seleucus, for having assumed the diadem without his
mother's consent, was put to death by her; the other, who, from the size of his
nose was named Grypus,80
was made king by his mother, so far at least that the
regal name should belong to him, while all the power of sovereignty was to
remain with herself.

II. But Alexander, having secured the throne of Syria, and being puffed up
with success, began, with insolent haughtiness, to show disrespect even to
Ptolemy himself, by whom he had been artfully advanced to royal dignity.
Ptolemy, in consequence, effecting a reconciliation with his sister, prepared,
with his utmost efforts, to overthrow that power, which, from hatred to
Demetrius, he had procured for Alexander by supplying him with troops. He
therefore sent a large force to the aid of Grypus, and his daughter Tryphaena to
marry him, that he might induce the people to support his nephew, not only by
sharing in the war with him, but by contracting with him this affinity. Nor were
his endeavours without effect; for when the people saw Grypus upheld by the
strength of Egypt, they began by degrees to fall away from Alexander. A battle
then took place between the kings, in which Alexander was defeated, and fled to
Antioch, Here, |267 being without money, and pay being wanted for his soldiers, he ordered a
statue of Victory of solid gold, which was in the temple of Jupiter, to be
removed, palliating the sacrilege with jests, and saying that "Victory was
lent him by Jupiter." Some days after, having ordered a golden statue of
Jupiter himself, of great weight, to be taken away secretly, and being caught in
the sacrilegious act, he was forced to flee by a rising of the people, and being
overtaken by a violent storm, and deserted by his men, he fell into the hands of
robbers, and being brought before Grypus, was put to death.

Grypus, having thus recovered his father's throne, and being freed from
foreign perils, found his life endangered by a plot of his own mother; who,
after betraying, from desire of power, her husband Demetrius, and putting to
death her other son, was discontented at her dignity being eclipsed by the
victory of Grypus, and presented him with a cup of poison as he was returning
home from taking exercise. But Grypus, having received notice of her treacherous
intention, desired her (as if to show as much respect for his mother as she
showed for him) to drink herself first, and, when she refused, pressed her
earnestly, and at last, producing his informant, charged her with the fact,
telling her, "that the only way left to clear herself from guilt, was, that
she should drink what she had offered to her son." The queen, being thus
disconcerted, and her wickedness turned upon herself, was killed with the poison
which she had prepared for another. Grypus, accordingly, having securely
established his throne, had peace himself, and secured it for his people, for
eight years. At the end of that time a rival for the throne arose, named
Cyzicenus, a brother of his own by the same mother, and son of his uncle
Antiochus. Grypus having tried to take him off by poison, provoked him the
sooner to contend for the throne with him by force of arms.

III. During these unnatural contentions in the kingdom of Syria,
Ptolemy,81
king of Egypt, died, leaving the kingdom of Egypt to his wife, and one of her
two sons, whichsoever she herself should choose; as if the condition of Egypt
would be more quiet than that of Syria had been, when the mother, by electing
one of her sons, would make the other her enemy. Though she was more inclined to
fix on the younger of her |268 sons, the people obliged her to nominate the elder, from whom, however,
before she gave him the throne, she took away his wife, compelling him to
divorce his sister Cleopatra, whom he very much loved, and requiring him to
marry his younger sister Selene; a determination as to her daughters not at all
becoming a mother, as she took a husband from one, and gave him to the other.
But Cleopatra being not so much divorced by her husband, as torn from her
husband by her mother, married Cyzicenus in Syria, and that she might not bring
him the mere name of a wife, carried over to him, as a dowry, the army of
Grypus, which she had induced to desert. Cyzicenus, thinking himself thus a
match for the power of his brother, gave him battle, but was defeated and put to
flight, and sought refuge in Antioch. Grypus then proceeded to besiege Antioch,
in which Cleopatra, the wife of Cyzicenus, was; and, when he had taken it,
Tryphaena, the wife of Grypus, desired that nothing should be searched for
before his sister Cleopatra, not that she might relieve her in her captivity,
but that she might not escape the sufferings of captivity; since she had invaded
the kingdom chiefly from envy towards her, and by marrying the enemy of her
sister had made herself her enemy.82 She also charged her with bringing a foreign
army to decide the disputes between the brothers, and with having married out of
Egypt, when she was divorced from her brother, contrary to the will of her
mother. Grypus, on the other hand, besought her, that "he might not be
driven to commit so heinous a crime;" saying, that "by none of his
forefathers, in the course of so many civil and foreign wars, had cruelties
after victory been inflicted upon women, whom their sex itself protected from
the perils of war and from ill-treatment on the part of the conquerors; and that
in her Case, besides the common practice of people at war, there was added the
closest tie of blood, for she was the full sister of her who would treat her so
cruelly, his own cousin, and aunt to their children." In addition to these
obligations of relationship, he mentioned also the superstitious regard paid to
the temple in which she had taken refuge, observing that "the gods were so
much the more religiously to be revered by him, as he had been the better
enabled to conquer by their |269 favour and protection; and that neither by killing her would he diminish the
strength of Cyzicenus, nor increase it by restoring her to him." But the
more Grypus held back, the more was Tryphaena excited with a womanish
pertinacity, fancying that her husband's observations proceeded not from pity
but from love. Summoning some soldiers herself, therefore, she despatched a
party to kill her sister. They, going into the temple, and not being able to
drag her away, cut off her hands while she was embracing the statue of the
goddess. Soon after Cleopatra expired, uttering imprecations on her unnatural
murderers, and commending the avenging of her fate to the outraged deities. And
not long after, another battle being fought, Cyzicenus, being victorious, took
Tryphaena, the wife of Grypus, who had just before killed her sister, prisoner,
and by putting her to death made atonement to the manes of his wife.

IV. In Egypt, Cleopatra, being dissatisfied at having her son Ptolemy to
share her throne, excited the people against him, and taking from him his wife
Selene (the more ignominiously, as he had now two children by her), obliged him
to go into exile, sending, at the same time, for her younger son Alexander, and
making him king in his brother's room. Nor was she content with driving her son
from the throne, but pursued him with her arms while he was living in exile in
Cyprus. After forcing him from thence, she put to death the general of her
troops, because he had let him escape from his hands alive; though Ptolemy,
indeed, had left the island from being ashamed to maintain a war against his
mother, and not as being inferior to her in forces.

Alexander, alarmed at such cruelty on the part of his mother, deserted her
also himself, preferring a life of quiet and security to royal dignity
surrounded with danger: while Cleopatra, fearing lest her elder son Ptolemy
should be assisted by Cyzicenus to re-establish himself in Egypt, sent powerful
succours to Grypus, and with them Selene, Ptolemy's wife, to marry the enemy of
her former husband. To her son Alexander she sent messengers to recall him to
his country; but while, by secret treachery, she was plotting his destruction,
she was anticipated by him and put to death, perishing, not by the course of
nature, but by the hand of her son, and having, indeed, well deserved so
infamous an end, since she |270 had driven her
mother 83 from the bed of her father, had made her two daughters
84 widows by alternate marriages with their brothers, had made war upon one of
her sons after sending him into exile, 85 and plotted against the life of the
other 86 after depriving him of his throne.

V. Neither did so unnatural a murder, on the part of Alexander, go
unpunished; for as soon as it was known that the mother had been killed by the
wickedness of her son, he was driven, by an insurrection of the people, into
banishment, and the crown was restored to Ptolemy, who was recalled, because he
had refused to make war against his mother, and to take from his brother by
force of arms what he himself had previously possessed. During the course of
these proceedings, his natural brother, 87 to whom his father had left the
kingdom of Cyrene by will, died, appointing the Roman people his heir; for the
fortune of Rome, not content with the limits of Italy, had now begun to extend
itself to the kingdoms of the east. Thus that part of Africa became a province
of the Roman empire; and soon afterwards Crete and Cilicia, being subdued in the
war against the pirates, were likewise made provinces. In consequence, the
kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, which had been accustomed to aggrandize themselves
by wars with their neighbours, being now confined by the vicinity of the Romans,
and deprived of all opportunity of extending their frontiers, employed their
strength to the injury of one another, so that, being exhausted by continual
battles, they fell into contempt with their neighbours, and became a prey to the
people of Arabia, a nation previously regarded as unwarlike. Their king
Erotimus, relying on his seven hundred sons, whom he had had by his concubines,
and dividing his forces, infested at one time Egypt, and another Syria, and
procured a great name for the Arabians, by exhausting the strength of their
neighbours. |271

BOOK XL.

The Syrians choose Tigranes, king of Armenia, to be their king, I.----A great
earthquake in Syria; Syria made a Roman province, II.

I. AFTER the kings and kingdom of Syria had been exhausted by unintermitting
wars, occasioned by the mutual animosities of brothers, and by sons succeeding
to the quarrels of their fathers, the people began to look for relief from
foreign parts, and to think of choosing a king from among the sovereigns of
other nations. Some therefore advised that they should take Mithridates of
Pontus, others Ptolemy of Egypt, but it being considered that Mithridates was
engaged in war with the Romans, and that Ptolemy had always been an enemy to
Syria, the thoughts of all were directed to Tigranes king of Armenia, who, in
addition to the strength of his own kingdom, was supported by an alliance with
Parthia, and by a matrimonial connection with Mithridates. Tigranes,
accordingly, being invited to the throne of Syria, enjoyed a most tranquil reign
over it for eighteen years, without having occasion to go to war either to
attack others or to defend himself.

II. But Syria, though unmolested by enemies, was laid waste by an earthquake,
in which a hundred and seventy thousand people, and several cities, were
destroyed; a portent which the soothsayers declared "to presage a change in
things."

After Tigranes was conquered by Lucullus, Antiochus, the son of Cyzicenus,
was made king of Syria by his authority. But what Lucullus gave, Pompey soon
after took away; telling him, when he made application for the crown, that
"he would not give Syria, even if willing to accept him, and much less if
unwilling, a king, who for eighteen years, during which Tigranes had governed
Syria, had lain hid in a corner of Cilicia, and now, when Tigranes was conquered
by the Romans, asked for the reward of other men's labours. Accordingly, as he
had not taken the throne from Tigranes while he held it, so he would not give
Antiochus what he himself had yielded to Tigranes, and what he would not know
how to defend, lest he should again expose Syria to the depredations of the Jews
and Arabians." He in consequence reduced Syria to the condition of a
province, and the whole east, through the dissensions of kings of the same
blood, fell by degrees under the power of the Romans.

[Footnotes moved to end and numbered]

1. * Phoenicen, caeterasque Syriae quidem, &c.] By Phoenice is meant
the country of Phoenicia; by the other cities, cities in Coelesyria, which
bordered on Phoenicia.

2. + Multas civitates.] Argos only is specified in the accounts of Nabis.
See Plutarch, Lives of Flamininus and Philopoemen; Liv. xxxii. 40.

3. ++. see xxx. 4.

4. * All the texts have facultas. Graevius and Vorstius think that we
should read difficultas. Scheffer is of opinion that facultas may
stand, in the sense of want of opportunity, but this does not suit well
with the inopia which follows.

5. + Consulem.] He was one of the suffetes, the two chief
magistrates ofCarthage. See Corn. Nep, Life of Hannibal, c. 7.

6. * Suis opibus.] That is, with the strength and resources of the
country.

7. * Novis quotidie nuptiis deditus erat.] An exaggeration. He had,
however, married his daughter Cleopatra to Ptolemy Epiphanes, Liv. xxxv. 13; he
gave another daughter to Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, and was going to give a
third to Eumenes, king of Pergamus, but he refused her. See Diod. Sic. xxix.
3.---- Wetzel.

8. + Lucius Aemilius Regillus, praetor, B.C. 191 (Liv. xxxvii. 26, 30;
xxxvi, 45); the battle was fought between Myconnesus and the promontory of
Corycus, and Aemilius triumphed for the victory in the following year; but
Antiochus appointed Polyxenides, not Hannibal, to command against him. See Liv.
xxxvii. 26; Florus, ii. 8.----Wetzel. Livy mentions Polyxenides only;
Florus both Polyxenides and Hannibal.

9. * Justin seems here to have abridged his author too much.

10. * Wetzel's text has Romani; but Romanis, the conjecture of
Graevius, is much more to the purpose.

11. * Verecundiâ magnitudinis ejus.] They did not make him die the death
of a slave or malefactor, but allowed him a mode of dying suitable to his rank.

12. + Elymaei Jovis ] Or rather Belus, who had a temple in Elymais full
of gold, silver, and valuable offerings, as is said by Diod. Sic. xxix.
fragm. 15. A different account of this king's death is given in Aurel. Vict.
liv. 5, and 1 Maccab. c. vi.-----Wetzel.

13. * Concursu insularium.] A temple, as a building standing by itself,
might be called insula; the people who dwelt in and about it insulares.
Insularium is a conjecture of Isaac Vossius; the previous reading was incolarum.

14. + He accused his brother of intending to be a fratricide; he
himself became a fratricide by causing his father to put his brother to
death.

15. * Argonautas raptoresque filiae.] Four of the old editions have raptoremque,
i. e. Jason----Wetzel.

16. + Propter magnitudinem navis.] Bongarsius thinks that navis is
to be understood in the sense of navigationis; but this is absurd. We
must simply understand that the river Save would not admit a ship of that size,
and that they were consequently obliged to take it on their shoulders and carry
it to the shores of the Adriatic. The story is well known.---- Vossius. As
to the carrying of the Argo on the shoulders of her crew, see Apoll. Rhod. iv.
1383, seqq. Scheffer would read navigationis instead of navis.

18. * Civitate.] That is, the city of Gortyn in which he resided. See
Corn. Nep. Life of Hannibal.

19. + Ponticis.] Rather Pergamenis, says Wetzel, Eumenes being king
of Pergamus.

20. ++ Qui ferro nequeant is the reading of all the editions, but it
should surely be quasi ferro nequeant.

21. * Sextario ] The sextarius was nearly a pint, being the sixth
part of the congius, which was equal to 5.9471 pints.

22. + Omnium regum.] A hyperbolical expression, such as our author often
uses. Previously, xxxii. 3, he mentions only the Gauls as auxiliaries of
Perseus; Livy, xlii 29, adds Cotys, king of the Odrysae. ---- Wetzel.

23. * Extra ordinem.] He had his province by lot in the usual way;
Macedonia fell to him, and Italy to his colleague Crassus.----Durand. See
Livy, xliv. 17.

24. + Hostium.] Seven of the old editions have omnium, which
Scheffer prefers, as it was a shout of congratulation, proceeding from the
Romans, not from the enemy.---- Wetzel.

25. ++ Sed rerum non nisi centum nonaginta duobus
annis potita.]
Macedonia attained its height when Alexander conquered Darius, B.C. 329, in which
year Justin, x. 3, considers that the Persian empire terminated, and the
Macedonian began. Between that year and the defeat of Perseus elapsed only 160
years, and if we would wish to make up our author's number of 192, we must take
in thirty-two from the previous period, going back to B.C. 361, when Philip was a
hostage at Thebes. Hence the reading of Bongarsius's codices, 152, seems
preferable; or, to take a round number, 150, the reading of three other copies;
and this is the number given by Livy, xlv. 9.---- Wetzel.

26. * Ptolemy Philometor, who reigned from B.C. 180 to 145 (see Diod.
Sic. xxx. 15), being the son and successor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, who married
the daughter of Antiochus the Great, sister to the Antiochus mentioned in the
text.---- Wetzel.

27. * Ptolemy Physcon, who became master of Cyrene and Libya in the year
B.C. 157, Diod. Sic. xxxi. 26. He succeeded his brother at his death, B.C. 135,
and reigned twenty-seven years.---- Wetzel.

28. + He had been sent to Rome as a hostage by his father Antiochus
the Great,
and afterwards by his brother Seleucus IV.---- Wetzel.

29. ++ He was not his uncle but his cousin, being the son of Seleucus IV., the
brother of Antiochus Epiphanes.----Bongarsius.

30. * Ostia or Hostia at the mouth of the Tiber.

31. + From the expression "he had come," venerat, it appears
that he had previously fled out of the kingdom, though Justin does not mention
his flight.

32. * Rege Asiae.] King of Pergamus, where he reigned twenty years,
B.C.
157 to 137.---- Wetzel.

33. * He that Justin calls Arsacides was the sixth of the Arsacidae, or
Mithridates I., who reigned from B.C. 173 to 136.----Wetzel. Arsacidae
was the common name of the descendants of Arsaces, the founder of the Parthian
power.

34. * Per ora civitatum.

35. + Vitio.] Some editions have initio.

36. ++ The confused account which our author, as well as Tacitus, v. 2,----14,
gives concerning the Jews, and the false statements contained in it, must be
corrected from the books of the Old Testament and from Josephus.----Wetzel.

37. * Wetzel's text has ex regina Semiramide, but I have thought proper to
follow the reading of the Juntine edition, et reginae Semiramidi, which
is found in two manuscripts, and which Wetzel himself prefers.

38. * A corruption of Aaron.

39. + Opobalsami.] In Gen. xxxvii. 25; xliii. 11, we find that Canaan
produced balm; it is now found only in Arabia Petraea. "The balm-tree (balsami
arbor) grew," says Origen, "in Judaea, only within a space of
about twenty acres, but after the Romans became masters of the country it was
propagated over extensive hills. Its stem is similar to that of the vine, and
its leaves to those of rue, but whiter and always remaining on the tree."
The word balsamum properly signifies the tree, and opobalsamum (that
is, o)po_j tou~ balsa&mou,as o)popa&nacis
o)po_j tou~
pa&nakoj,juice of all-heal, Diosc. iii. 48) the juice; xylobalsamum
means the wood of the tree. Justin, however, contrary to the practice of
other writers, uses opobalsamum for the tree, and balsamum for the
juice.----Lemaire.

40. ++ That is, Jericho, which is the reading of the Cologne edition.----Wetzel.

41. * Tepidi aëris naturalis quaedam et perpetua apricitas inest.] Such
is the reading of Gronovius and Wetzel, who interpret apricitas to
signify a moderate warmth or tepidity. Some of the older editions have opacitas,
which Tauchnitz and Dübner have adopted. "Salmasius, on Solinus, p.
990, says that not every place exposed to the sun is properly called apricus,
but one which lies open to a gentle and moderate influence of his beams.
Hence aprici colles, Virg Ecl. ix. 49, are hills turned towards the
rising sun, which, not being excessively hot, is well suited for ripening
grapes."----Berneccerus.

42. + Primum Xerxes----domuit.] This is an error. The kingdom of Israel
was overthrown by Shalmaneser, B.C. 722, and that of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar,
B.C. 588. The return from captivity, under Cyrus, was B.C. 536. The Jews
continued subject to the Persians till the time of Alexander, after whom they
were under the rule, sometimes of the Ptolemies, and sometimes of the
Seleucidae, till B.C. 167.----Dübner.

48. + Quartam cli partem.] That is, forty-five degrees. There was a
similar comet, B.C. 372, which Aristotle, Meteor. i. 6, calls a great comet, and
which spread its tail over a third part of the sky, i.e. over sixty degrees.
Diod. Siculus also, xv. 50, says that its light was like that of the moon.---- Wetzel.

49. ++ Quum oriretur occumberetque, quatuor horarum spatium
consumebat.]
That is, after it touched the horizon, at its rising or setting, four hours
elapsed before it wholly appeared or disappeared.

50. § Se----stagnavit.] Gronovius and
Graevius would read stannavit;
but stagnare is used by Vegetius in the sense of securing or
fortifying, and Justin has the passive stagnor, xxxvi. 3.

51. * Pontum occupavit.] How Pontus, of which, he was already master? ----Wetzel.
But from the words bella Pontica, in xxxviii. 7, it may be
conjectured that he had to fight before he secured his throne.

52. + Asia Minor.

53. * He had been banished; see below.

54. * The commentators are divided respecting these names. Bongarsius and
Vorstius, from Appian, and Livy, Epit. lxxvii. think that the first name should
be Manius Aquilius. The Juntine edition has Aquilius Manlius et Manius
Attilius; Becharius and Major read Aquilius Mallius et Maltinus. But
conjecture is useless; the same names are repeated, without any praenomina, in
c. 4 of this book. The name Malthinus occurs in Horace.

55. + See xxv. 2.

56. ++ Vacationem.] That this is the sense of vacatio, though tributorum
is not expressed, is generally agreed. For instances of similar immunity,
Berneccerus refers to Tacit. Ann. ii. 56, and Liv. xlv. 18.

58. * Wetzel has pro jure imperii in his text, but seems to prefer, in his
note on the passage, J. F. Gronovius's reading, pro vice imperii, which
is found in some MSS.

59. + By the Samnites; Liv. ix. 5; Vell. Pat. i. 14.

60. * All the editions have adoptione testamenti, et regum domesticorum
interitu. Scheffer asks, "What is adoptione testamenti?
Perhaps," he adds, "adoption made per testamentum. But no one
has explained this form of adoption; and if it were explained, whence does it
appear that any adoption was made in this case per testamentum?" He
concludes by proposing to read adoptione, testamento, &c.

61. + This Christos is nowhere else mentioned.

62. * See xxxvi. 4.

63. + Divitiarumque avidos ac jejunos.] A confusion of man and wolf.

64. ++ Earum
se gentium esse.] Faber observes that regem is wanting in the text,
and must be supplied.

68. * Romana bella.] Of which Justin gives no regular account. He touches
on the subject, xxxvii. 1, and xxviii. 3; but what he relates of Aquilius and
Maltinus in the latter passage occurred twenty-three years after Mithridates
commenced the war.

69. + Philometor. See xxxiv. 2.

70. ++ Physcon. See xxxiv. 2.

71. * xxxvi. 1.

72. + See note on xxxvi. 1.

73. * Because Phraates thought that such a tie was likely to attach Demetrius to
Hyrcania.----Lemaire.

74. + Wetzel's text, and, I believe, all others, have mitem clementiam, but
as mitem is a useless epithet, I have followed Scheffer's conjecture, miram
clementiam.

75. ++ See xxxvi. 1.

76. § Trecenta millia.] Triginta millia, which appears in the Ven.
Ald. and Col. editions, is a more probable number.---- Wetzel.

77. * Obsidione.] Obsidio for captivitas.---- Vorstius. An
odd word. But the sense is evident. See xxxvi. 1; xxxviii. 10.

78. + Apamene was a district of Syria, in which stood the city of Apamia.

79. ++ Ptolemy spread a report that this youth, to whom he gave the name of
Alexander, and who is called Zebennas by Josephus, xiii. 17, and Zabinas by
Diod. Sic. xxxiv. fragm. 20, 22, was the son of the Antiochus killed by the
Parthians, xxxviii. 8, or rather of Alexander Bala. See xxxv. 1, 2.---- Wetzel.